More Content Talk

The mainstream media is coming to eat you and your children with their giant cell phones and TVs. Run for you lives! Save yourselves by acting irrationally! Ah! Okay, now that that's over, let's get serious, shall we? I hate talking points...all of them. They lack substance and any real motivation to get anything done. So I do the best I can to annihilate, to rid the world of such nonsensical banter and replace it with science. Some believe that is too difficult to do, but, though the internet is pretty full of shit, it also has a wealth of extremely valuable information that is readily available to the populous for free for the first time in human history. One such bit of information is found in this episode on media and human behavior. Turns out scientists from several different nations ran a comprehensive study on how media influences us, and the findings are probably not what you would expect. But let me first assure you that the people over at Kansas University, who published the study, are not the kind of folks you would normally associate with liberal causes. These are just scientists trying to spread knowledge so any rejection of these people and their findings is rejection of scientific fact. This study sampled over 80,000 articles across several different nations and polled thousands of people worldwide. This study is one of the best of its kind; it's thorough and plays not guessing games. So what did they find? Well, much to the chagrin of conspiracy theorists who believe they are important enough to be "brainwashed" by the media, it turned out that media influenced people differently depending on the nation. The most interesting part of the study disproves the evil mainstream media theory right off the bat. It turns out that people who live in wealthy nations like the United States are less influenced by the media than people living in less developed nations. Know why? Because of the diversity of our media! Our media is one of the most diverse in the world, offering different viewpoints from different types of people and causes, the very cornerstone of democracy. So, why are conservatives defaming our very free media and trying to destroy it? Find out on More Content Talk. 

Do you know? Do you know for sure? Are you certain? Why are you so certain? Why do you need to feel that you know everything? Why does that comfort you? The human mind is always looking to solve problems. This is not always a bad thing. Problem solving is a valuable human skill, as long as it is done correctly. The problem with that is that we all have our own personal biases. Thus, it becomes extremely important for us to remember that something that is fact in the present, or that was once fact in the past, may very well not be in the future. Yet, instead of recognizing that we live in a chaotic, unpredictable and often times dangerous world, we choose to lie to ourselves in order to soothe anxiety. But, like fear, anxiety can be quite useful. It creates a sense of urgency about emergencies that is currently lacking in this nation because of years of focusing on being happy twenty four hours a day. Anxiety can inform us that we are making poor decisions or that we need to make improvements to prior decisions. Unfortunately, we are taught at a young age that we must be able to predict the future and all of its ills, that we should go into every situation knowing what the outcomes will be. This is folly. You cannot know everything, no matter how well you plan for it. How many of you predicted the current pandemic we are in? How many predicted the violent response from anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers? How many predicted that a third of the nation would descend into madness? How many predicted the volatile housing market? The increase in crime? The destabilization of society? None of us, aside from a few lucky guesses here and there of course. This does not mean that we should give up on trying to know things. It means that we should recognize our biases, that we should look before we leap and that we should recognize our decision making skills are not perfect. If we approach problems in a way that is not based on the presumption that we know everything like some god or deity, then we can make more informed human decisions about the present, which is all that really matters, and leave the problems of the future to those who are able to enjoy it. Photo Credit: Jenni Jones. Sound credit: Bensound.com

Nowadays, you do not hear as many warnings as you used to when the pandemic started. Even as the south becomes a powder keg for the disease and the suffering is still great, there now is this silly undertone of, "well, it can't be that bad". I have heard people refer to this passive aggressive behavior as "pandemic fatigue" and perhaps it is, but that does not make such behavior acceptable. I cannot, in good conscience, allow people to "whatever" their way through life anymore. There are lot of different ways of saying "whatever" like "just get over it" or "you can't change things" or "you're just going to die anyway" or "it's beyond my control" or "that would never happen". Everyone always says "whatever" when they feel defeated, when they have lost hope. A hopeless person is a sad thing to witness, but such a person also presents a very real threat to society. This kind of reckless abandon is expected from teenagers and toddlers, not grown adults with a PHD, a new book deal, several speaking engagements, and a successful marketing strategy on social media. We have made profound intellects out of people with fantasy prone personalities. This, my dear listeners, is dangerous. Think of all the appeals to emotion that permeate anti-vaxx arguments, all the belief in various nonsensical arguments. That is no coincidence. Acceptance of people is fine, but radical acceptance of every idea that pops into a person's mind is not acceptance; it is stupidity and gullibility. Whoever gave Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson or Joseph Mercola or whatever dumb pastor who is filled with the power of the holy toast this week (preachers and congregants alike have told stories of the various times they see Jesus in their sandwich bread; seriously, I am not making that up) had a serious lapse in judgement. These cracker jacks should not have even been allowed out of middle school, let alone ascend the heights of national leadership! When you go to college you are supposed to study reason and rational thought. Rand Paul has never had one rational thought for crying out loud. The last person Tucker Carlson reasoned with was his stock broker. The whole right wing has lost its damn mind. Political scientists know this. Sure, the right wingers try not to talk about it so much because their fans will have them fired, the very same thing they rail against when it happens on liberal networks, but everyone in the political world knows that this radical acceptance of nonsensical political dialogue is absolutely insane. This disease is life or death. You have to fight to survive. Are we going to fight or are we going to lay on the ground and wait for the disease to come and kill us? Don't get lost in the poetry of the pandemic. Don't let these news hosts come on TV and tell you its not that bad. That's bullshit. It is that bad. Stop it with the "whatever" crap. You get one life, a little bit of time here to experience all those wonderful things we take for granted like the smell of freshly baked banana bread or a hug from a child or a lover's contented smile. And within those little things lies the key to the willingness to preserve life on this planet. It's your life. It's our life. It's not just "whatever". No one can convince you that you matter if you will not even recognize it yourself.  

The cover art for this episode is the ancient Greek God Poseidon, wielding his gold phallic symbol...I mean trident, in all of its pointed pointless glory. Poseidon is a great representation of patriarchy. He is strong, physically fit, irritable man who floats around the world starting wars, getting into meaningless arguments with humans, starting and competing in contests, sleeping with whoever or whatever he chooses, and starting causing natural disasters that eventually lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent people all so he can prove who has the biggest holy wang. Poseidon was Zeus' brother so he pretty much had it made, but being the brother to the king of all gods was just not enough for Poseidon. He wanted to be the king of the gods. Hades, a Greek god who was also Zeus', fought with Zeus and Poseidon for control of the world after beating the Titans, who were there celestial parents. However, they were so equally matched that the fight ended in a three way tie. In order to rectify this, they each drew gems from a bag. Zeus ended up controlling the sky, Hades was given the underworld and Poseidon got the ocean. But Poseidon's lust for power was never fully quenched; he often quarreled with and compared himself to Zeus, always noting how much better he was than his chosen brother. Poseidon flexed his muscle in the Trojan war and also ruined the journey home for Odysseus, one of Zeus' favored humans. It is Poseidon who is responsible for the Odyssey; Odysseus blinded Poseidon's son and Poseidon takes his revenge on Odysseus and Zeus for this reason. This flexing of muscle for nonsensical reasons and ego inflating is key to understanding patriarchy, a system which persecutes women by turning them into property. But patriarchy was not a uniquely male invention. Women and children had extremely low lifespans in ancient civilization, with a 75 percent mortality rate for infants and the average woman only living to twenty eight years. Egalitarian societies did not thrive because they did not have a warrior class to protect their tribes and so were overtaken by patriarchal tribes. This causes the sexes to come up with a sexual division of tasks. The men lived longer, so they hunted and led. Women did not live as long, so they stayed at home and cared for the children. Today there is no longer a need for such a system, but certain men scheme to keep it afloat in order to reap the many benefits of this ancient traditional tribalism. 

Exposing ourselves to unsavory ideas will certainly not make us any smarter. However, all we have to do is cease watching whatever material a propagandist has set before us, and go about our business as usual. Children should be armed with the tools to decipher what is and what is not censorship while at school, but this does not always happen. It may not even happen most of the time for all we know. Simply assuming that propaganda is "obvious" enough to identify has proven to be an ineffective strategy for dealing with the harmful blowback of misinformation. Many people believe false claims, and it is not just people we consider unsavory or uneducated or "crazy". In my experiences with people, it becomes obvious rather quickly that many of them are open to new experiences. This is all a con artist or a propagandist needs of his target; the target must be actively seeking new information. This openness to new information becomes expanded during times of crisis, so much so that even things the target would consider laughable during times of stability or prosperity, can become rather appealing when the target is in despair. Even more disquieting, there is evidence that exposure to propaganda eventually alters political actions, but this exposure must be consistent over a long period of time. There are also some studies that suggest specifically targeting hate speech is, in fact, a successful form of censorship, meaning that discouraging things like racism or sexism in public does actually work. But this can prove to be quite difficult to solidify in the realm of political policies that will actually stand the test of time. We so many of these anti-hate speech laws being mangled and redefined today because the lingering effects of the Trump administration. Of course such attempts by the federal government to squash hate also immediately reflects where the government stands on domestic terrorism, and we have seen the consequences of being weak on domestic terrorism since the Trump administration as well. Indeed, as a political scientist, when I refer to censorship I am not really talking about your right to walk up to me and call me a racial slur. I do not want to encourage that type of behavior. So, you are walking a thing line when you argue, as so many people do, that people should be allowed to say whatever they want, whenever they want. That is going a bit too far for me. I am not comfortable with hellfire preachers disrupting students on their way to class, nor a I a big fan of Proud Boys starting fights in the name of their "first amendment rights". You have to have clear limits to free speech. Starting shit because you're having a bad day is not a "protected right", and, even if it was, you are strange for wanting to do that. At the same time, people will do silly things like with the power to limit speech. They will ban musical artists they dislike or put the squeeze on competing businesses that don't pony up a little extra money come rent time. This is a tricky subject. It's not as simple as just saying look at the first amendment because the meaning of constitutional amendments changes with every new Supreme Court Justice appointee. They essentially reinterpret the Constitution every time they hear a case. That is how our government is designed. But I do dislike the idea of some bully deciding who can and cannot say what. However, I also understand that private businesses and property owners can pretty much tell you to do whatever they want if you decide to drag your happy behind into their establishments. Tricky stuff here. It's not walk in the park. So, my arguments against censorship are not arguments for misinformation. Instead my arguments against censorship clearly demonstrate that censoring people over and over again actually contributes to negative and anti social behaviors, further radicalizing extreme ideas and putting them in the heads of people who otherwise may have never been exposed to them. 

At any moment in time in this nation, you will find some pompous ass gloating about a study they read online about how the generations are so very different from each other. And, as is the case with the philosophy of pompous asses, they have no evidence, nor do they believe that they even need such evidence. "It's obvious that younger people have shorter attention spans than the average adult these days," they gloat, "why, just look at how they do not listen to my mind numbingly boring lecture on why children are idiots. Surely, this proves that they are inferior!" Then there are young people, who claim in an equally pompous way, "It is obvious that older people are suffering from cognitive decline," they sneer after seeing some elderly politician give a speech, "All the signs of dementia are there. How could they have allowed this person out in the real world with beautiful, intelligent people such as myself?" Of course the young person blanket diagnosing every old person they meet with dementia is equally as silly as the older person diagnosing every young person they meet with ADHD or whatever popular personality disorder comes to mind at the moment. None of this is rational or precise in any way, yet the generation masturbation continues with no end in sight. Why is it considered acceptable behavior to make generalizations about other groups of people? What are you trying to accomplish by making others feel inferior to you? And how do you expect to have a society that takes its leaders seriously whilst those same leaders are trying to appease the hatred you spew onto other groups with little to no evidence that such hatred is even warranted? If you are a pompous ass, you probably do not care at all, which is the problem in a nutshell. 

Climate change has set California ablaze again. And, since it has become apparent that our so called leaders would rather squabble over whether or not climate change is real than actually face the facts and do the hard work of leadership, it is becoming increasingly important that informed individuals do what they can to help. That is why I was so interested to find that the reason for America's ever increasing fire problem is far more complex than we may think. While the Dixie fire started because of climate change, one of the disturbing reasons it has been so difficult to quench is because of some fires, seven that we know of so far, that were set intentionally by a former college professor who was living out of his car. The disgraced professor had lost his job and fallen on hard times, most likely meaning he was not receiving any kind of therapy. His few friends described the man as troubled and needing help. But there was no one there to help him and eventually he turned to violence. Though this incident may sound isolated, I can assure that the data states otherwise. The paradise fire also had at least two people who intentionally sough to keep the blaze burning. These people also set multiple fires, prolonging the already large inferno. In fact, about 226,00 fires annually are set in the United States intentionally by human hands. Pyromania has a very stigmatized past, and though it can surely be used for things like revenge and domestic terrorism, it is also a known mental disorder that is often overlooked and even criminalized by our justice system. This poses some interesting questions about how we address pyromania and how to prevent it from causing the estimated billion dollars in damage that it causes the United States to lose every year. 

Optimism is often promoted as the all in one cure all for, well...everything. You got a hangnail? Be more optimistic for instant relief. The kids just got sent home from school early and you have not had the chance to make dinner. Optimism is the key. Have you been diagnosed with a chronic illness. Smile and go to work this instant! But there is scientific proof that optimism can turn into a bias, shutting us off from reality, and plunging into a horrifying dystopia of false hopes and unachievable goals. I'm not calling for an end to optimism, but I do want to let you know that sometimes looking on the bright side of life for too long can leave you blinded. 

How dare I? I mean, really, the audacity, the carelessness, the sheer gull of a person who would actually put others before themselves from time to time is downright dastardly. Ruthlessness and a will to triumph over everyone is what drives the modern human. They view caring as weakness, much like former President Trump, who, if you check the ratings, most people are infatuated with. It is a curious things that all news, wheterh it be liberal, centrist or conservative, sees a huge ratings boost every time agent orange hops on stage to spew his hate filled remarks. It is rather telling of how people actually feel about empathy, that they eagerly tune in to watch a man who is the antithesis of empathy, that they show way more love for that arrogant ass than they ever show to artists or scientists or doctors or teachers or even the police officers they pretend to like. Why does that guy get all of the attention? Why are positive social movements that will actually benefit society in some way relegated to the bottom of the ratings charts? Gee, that is a hard question. Quick, someone call Rudy Giuliani this instant so he can advise me on what to do now that he has no money. Rudy was cutthroat; he lied at every turn. He is in the news too on almost daily basis. What were supposedly liberal news networks doing yesterday? Talking about Trump. Talking about Tucker Carlson. Talking about Candace Owens. Talking about the absolutely awful infrastructure bill...in a positive light of course, being sure to leave out the fact that is going to raise the cost of toll booths and parking. Avoiding having to talk about the eviction moratorium at all costs. Avoiding criticizing the hypocrisy of supposedly progressive congress people who continue to dismiss the threat to voting rights, the inhumane conditions at immigrant detainment centers, the fact that our transit system is inadequate, etc. Even on climate change the liberals have been weak, doing absolutely nothing to mitigate the very real environmental crisis we are in. Oh, and all those people who are not vaccinated, no one cares about them. People would rather go to a motorcycle convention or a concert than give a damn about young children. I know because there are now ICUs that are full of young kids. But they're not dying...yet. They will, but nobody cares about kids; they do not make money after all. But seriously, though, back to me, back to this guy on social media that you cannot stand; yeah, that's me. That guy needs to go, right? Me? The person with little to no influence; I am the problem. It is not all the people with real world influence that manipulate mass amounts of wealth that you need to worry about. You can get past the violent outcry from a society you have ignored if you keep your head down and don't make eye contact; at least that is what you tell yourself. You will be just fine with all the fake leaders and the good for nothing celebrities and the abusers. You can handle it. You are an adult. That means that you are mature enough to ignore it, to sweep it under the rug so that you can have your down time. I know. Everybody does that though. Everybody says they simply cannot believe that someone would challenge them, that someone would actually speak out against injustice. I know it upsets you, but that is really all I have left. Knowing that my mistakes can save others is what keeps me going.